Sunday, February 24, 2008

Project Evil AP

My new project these days is wireless routers and all the mods that can be done to them. I know some of this stuff is a little old and has "been done" however it is new to me and I am having quite a bit of fun with it.

I started with a linksys WRT54GL wireless router which is the newest Linux version of their router. ost of the info on the web is for modding the older routers but I did find some for the L including this book.

I highly recommend the book if you are planning on hacking up your router. I will be slowly adding to the blog as I go with pictures.

The first thing I did was upgrade to the latest dd-wrt release. Later on I may switch to open-wrt but at this time dd-wrt had some features I liked. The next thing I did was order a couple of 9db antennas from fab-corp to amp up the my signal a little. At this point I decide to preform the SD card mod which I found in the book I mentioned above. I'm not going to go into the actuall install because there is plenty of info in the book and on the web. This gave me a extra 1.9 gigs of memory.

Now for the software. I configured the router to be a wireless repeater which would repeat the strongest wi-fi signal it could find. I then found a script called Auto AP which takes it one step further. It actively searches out the strongest signal by itself at boot and continues to re scan and stay connected to the strongest open signal. The script can be modified to accept wep keys and preffered essid's.

Since the start of the project I have switched the router to use open-wrt firmware. It is a much smaller app and suites my needs alot better. dd-wrt is great firmware however I felp it was a little boloated with apps I didn't need (kinda like Vista). Anyway I am in the process of getting it built back up into a fully functional MITM type machine.